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Four Square Blocks: Toronto

By JULIE LASKYJULY 30, 2014

The latest installment of a series about creative urban neighborhoods explores the cultural highlights of an area near downtown Toronto. Part of the city’s designated Art and Design District, this section of Queen West is experiencing a jolt of popularity and prosperity and some of the pangs of gentrification. One might even say it’s in the sweet spot between scared off and priced out.

Overview

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Between a Loft and a Hard Place

Overview

First came the manor houses, then the mental hospital, then the stockyards. By the end of the 19th century, the part of Toronto known today as Queen West had had more reversals of fortune than an entire season of “Dallas” (the original or the new version).

That was before industry and immigration billowed in the 20th century, before this neighborhood west of downtown grew seedy and unpredictable, before a gangland double murder was committed in a karaoke bar in 2003.

And long before the poles reversed again, and Queen West became one of the most appealing places in Toronto.

Today, more than a mile of the road called Queen Street West, from Bathurst Street to Gladstone Avenue, has been declared Toronto’s Art and Design District. Exploring this area last month, particularly Queen from Shaw to Dovercourt and north on Ossington Avenue to Argyle, I saw a neighborhood caught between the twin attractions of latte and graffiti. (That comprises more than four blocks, but some of those blocks are so small and irregular as to be better thought of as chips.)

It’s the usual story: In a superheated real estate market, Torontonians are embracing the comforts of specialty shops, farm-to-table cuisine and loft apartments, while regretting the flight of artist-pioneers and the loss of affordable housing. They are drinking microbrews and nurturing their rough patches.

But despite these clichés of gentrification, the neighborhood is like no other. It has charming exaggerations: a retired Victorian fire station (now a drug treatment facility) with a tower like a pilgrim hat; a boutique called Crywolf selling candles scented with “Canadian” odors like Muskoka campfire and Up North S’mores; a cocktail paraphernalia shop called BYOB with 160 varieties of bitters.

“This is probably the most fertile creative area in the city right now,” said Nelda Rodger, editorial director of Azure, a design magazine she founded in Toronto in 1985.

It is also one of the oldest. In the late 18th century, Queen Street was known as Lot Street, after the narrow 99-acre parcels that John Graves Simcoe, the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada, bestowed on his military confederates as a way to create a loyal landed aristocracy.

By 1818 a manor house called Brookfield, the estate of the Denison family, stood at the northwest corner of present-day Queen and Ossington, where the Canadian film director Atom Egoyan opened Camera, a screening room and bar, 186 years later. Directly south, the Provincial Lunatic Asylum was opened in 1850 on the current site of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

As lot owners sold off their lands, and the area became populated and industrialized, the parcels crumbled into small blocks with little coherence. They are “helter skelter,” said Benj Hellie, the spokesman for the Ossington Community Association, which has pushed to have the neighborhood declared a heritage conservation district. In his proposal, Mr. Hellie, who is also a philosophy professor at the University of Toronto, described cattle being driven from Ossington along tiny Bruce Street in the 19th century on their way to the slaughterhouse.

The application for heritage status was recently turned down, Mr. Hellie said, on the grounds that the district was “not sufficiently intact.” In some ways, his proposal can be read as a memorial to the many neighborhood buildings that have been demolished and the historical layers buried. The oldest existing structures he identified on Ossington appear to date from no earlier than 1871. One is a modest shingled house at No. 91, now home of Crywolf.

Still, the neighborhood throbs with historical echoes. Not two blocks north of Bruce Street, where cattle marched to their doom, is Côte de Boeuf, a butcher that provides meat to Union restaurant, a sister business at 72 Ossington. The Candy Factory Lofts, on the south side of Queen, east of Shaw, is a relic of local industry, as is the 1970s former textile factory that houses the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, or Mocca, diagonally northwest.

Ms. Rodger dates the area’s revival from the Candy Factory (1999-2000), one of Toronto’s first loft conversions. (The mid-naughts renovations of the Drake and Gladstone Hotels farther west on Queen were also important catalysts, she said.) But residential real estate development also poses threats to the neighborhood fabric. Soon — the date is uncertain — Mocca’s building will be demolished to make way for luxury condos. David Liss, Mocca’s artistic director, said his lease ends in June of next year. He declined to say where the museum may go after that, but hinted that the neighborhood had grown too expensive for it to remain there.

At the same time, the Ossington Community Association fought to prevent a condo loft development at 109 Ossington from rising to its proposed six stories. The group succeeded only in reducing the 70.5-foot height by about five feet and in halving the 10,800 square feet of ground floor space designated for commercial use, to discourage occupancy by a big-box store. The project, 109OZ, hasn’t yet broken ground; the few available apartments are still being sold through a brightly painted presentation center, a former auto body shop on the site, where concerts and parties have been staged to lure young buyers. Renderings show a lobby painted in a variety of hot colors and strung with pendant lamps like a line of fringe.

Mr. Liss does not appear to be perturbed by these circumstances, possibly because he sees his museum as contributing to the change. Art has made Queen West more magnetic and now everyone is piling on. “Culture,” he said, “is the shock troops of gentrification.”

Queen Street West

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Credit
Robert Wright for The New York Times

StyleGarage

Queen Street West

The home furnishings store, which designs and manufactures its own pieces as well as distributing the Gus Modern furniture brand, is expert at fitting out the long, narrow apartments cropping up in Toronto’s many new condos, said Neil James, an owner. The shop is something of a neighborhood pioneer, having been at the corner of Queen and Shaw since 2000. Mr. James took over the storefront next door in 2008, but said a landlord forbade him to rip down the wall between the two spaces. He plans to move to a duplex on Ossington Avenue in November.

Queen Street West

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Credit
Robert Wright for The New York Times

Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art

Queen Street West

“Herero Women Marching,” a 2012 photomural of Namibian women by the British artist Jim Naughten, will be displayed in the museum’s courtyard until Aug. 18. Founded in 1999 as the Art Gallery of North York, Mocca has occupied its current site, a former textile factory, since 2005. It won’t be there much longer. A consortium of developers who own the property have plans to raze it and build luxury condominiums in its place. Mocca’s lease runs through June 2015, said the museum’s director, David Liss, adding, “Of course, we can stay here until they put a shovel in the ground.”

Queen Street West

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Credit
Robert Wright for The New York Times

BYOB Cocktail Emporium

Queen Street West

Toronto’s self-described first cocktail emporium sells everything to do with drinking, except alcohol. The shop offers a staggering 160-plus variety of bitters, including the popular Dillon’s brand, made in the Niagara region. Other bestsellers include beer-making kits and tiki paraphernalia.

Queen Street West

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Credit
Robert Wright for The New York Times

Sam James Coffee Bar Oz

Queen Street West

Sam James opened his fourth Toronto coffee shop three months ago in a pocket-size, attractively minimal space near the corner of Ossington and Queen. As the website points out, the cafe offers something Torontonians will cherish in winter: a heated concrete stoop.

Queen Street West

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Credit
Robert Wright for The New York Times

Stephen Bulger Gallery

Queen Street West

Stephen Bulger opened a photography gallery farther east on Queen Street in 1995 and moved to the current location in 2004. The new gallery includes the Camera bar event space (see below) and a small bookstore. Last month, it was showing the work of Carl Zimmerman, who creates fantasy images of totalitarian-style architecture.

Queen Street West

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Credit
Robert Wright for The New York Times

Camera

Queen Street West

The Camera bar was founded in 2004 by the Academy Award-nominated film director Atom Egoyan and his production parter, Hussain Amarshi, as an intimately scaled cinema and lounge. Two years later, Stephen Bulger, who leases space in the building for his photography gallery, took it over. Mr. Bulger continues to run it as an event space.

Queen Street West

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Credit
Robert Wright for The New York Times

Rec+Art History

Queen Street West

Rec+Art History is the vintage shop of Ron Fraser, a former television prop stylist. “Rec” is short for “reclaimed” or “recycled.” “Art History” was inspired by Mr. Fraser’s business partner, Katharine Mulherin, who has a contemporary art gallery nearby: “She likes old things,” he said. Shown is a dishware set ($49), from the Hycroft China company, which operated in Medicine Hat, Alberta, until the late 1980s.

1080 Queen Street West, 416-662-9235

Queen Street West

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Credit
Robert Wright for The New York Times

Dynasty

Queen Street West

Andrea Leigh, a television set decorator now working as an interior designer, opened this plant store in October. Her favorite wares, she said, are exotics that can be brought inside in a Canadian winter to create a “tropical paradise.” As for the name, Ms. Leigh said her partner, Michael Leach, chose it because it reflects “the whole idea of passing plants down because they can live forever.” She added, “He also liked the show.”

Ossington Avenue

16 Ossington Avenue

Ossington Avenue

This landmarked 1878 building was once Toronto’s Fire Hall No. 9 and was topped by a lattice-like clock tower. It currently serves as Toronto Western Hospital’s men’s detox center.

Ossington Avenue

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Credit
Robert Wright for The New York Times

WilliamsCraig Design

Ossington Avenue

Karen Williams and Joelle Craig moved their 15-year-old interior design practice to its current location two years ago (both live in the immediate neighborhood). Part of the storefront is a vintage emporium selling things like a 1950s daybed paired with a cowhide ($3,200).

Ossington Avenue

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Credit
Robert Wright for The New York Times

Cry Wolf

Ossington Avenue

“Most things here are Canadian,” Stephanie Drabik said, as a visitor took in refrigerator magnets printed with the words “No Mo Ro Fo,” a plea to see the political end of Toronto’s crack-smoking mayor, Rob Ford. In 2008, Ms. Drabik and her high school friend Rose Chang began selling screen-printed clothing online and at craft fairs; they opened their shop on Ossington last year.

Ossington Avenue

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Credit
Robert Wright for The New York Times

109OZ

Ossington Avenue

This jazzily painted former auto body shop is a presentation center for a controversial condominium development on the east side of Ossington near Argyle. Neighborhood activists who protested the six-story height of the proposed loft building were successful in having it reduced by only 5 feet. The 85 one- to two-bedroom apartments start at about $320,000 Most have been sold.

Argyle Street

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Credit
Robert Wright for The New York Times

52 Argyle Street

Argyle Street

East of Ossington, this house reflects the Second Empire style (mansard roof, curved dormer windows, bay front) that was popular in Toronto in the late 19th century. Benj Hellie, a neighbor who is also the spokesman for the Ossington Community Association, said that until recently, the house was owned by Neil Clark, a guitarist who played with the 1980s British band Lloyd Cole and the Commotions.